A Commonplace Book

I can read the later Joyce and Mrs. Woolf in small passages, for the details are often entertaining, even though their function may be trivial. But I simply cannot read the neat but simple Mr. Hemingway, nor the inarticulate (though doubtless profound) Mr. Faulkner, and I can see no reason why I should be asked to try. I am a student of literature, not an anthropologist, and I have better ways of spending the few years remaining to me.